• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

how do you handle your web site navigation ?

J

JimMarn

SOC-14 1K
On my Traveller site I've run into a problem.

The site menus I'm using are getting large enoguh, they have run into the php text limit of 64 kilobytes.

I found out o nthe textpattern, the cms I'm using, forums that i can take the menu part and make it into a textpattern form. Call it by reference, and they limit goes away... of course, when the li ul div menu system gets to 64 kb by itself, that will mean I'm at a standstill for referencing articles/posts on my site.

One suggestion is I learn CSS and make my own menu system.

How do you handle sites with massive number of pages/articles ?

Thanks !
 
SpaceBadger said:
Subpages so you don't have to fit the whole list into one cascade?
Click to expand...

That is one suggestion I received from some folks on a web host I used to work for.

The menus I'm using can be set up to have multiple menus on one page.

I can see how it would turn away visitors... but it might be my only option. Especially since I intend to have thousands of worlds on my site. I'm not up to 500 planet maps yet, but I am getting close.
 
JimMarn said:
I can see how it would turn away visitors... but it might be my only option. Especially since I intend to have thousands of worlds on my site. I'm not up to 500 planet maps yet, but I am getting close.
Click to expand...

Then you certainly need to subdivide in some way. There is absolutely no reason to have that many items on one menu. Either subdivide them astrographically, or just make an alphabetical index page rather than a menu, or have a search box... there are LOTS of ways of indexing stuff like this, and no reason that I am aware of to have them all on one menu.
 
I redid one web site years ago, when I learned of cms/blog software. Took months, but I did get it completed.

I think I can handle my Traveller site by having a menu at the top of every page for the Galaxy Arms, and links to each column.

On a separate page, links down to each sector in each column, with links to sub-sectors.

I did look at the Traveller map site, but it is on an .asp site, and my web host is NetBSD. So I don't think that would work.

Some form of it might work, I'll check with my web host.
 
you should be able to override the limit in your php.ini config file. There's no absolute reason why it needs to be 64
 
JimMarn said:
I did look at the Traveller map site, but it is on an .asp site, and my web host is NetBSD. So I don't think that would work.
Click to expand...

I don't generate any textual pages server-side anyway. The text pages are either static or generated client-side, with the server just providing data APIs.

At that volume of pages, providing Search functionality or other hierarchical navigation is going to be critical for users to actually find anything.
 
One thing I thought of, was to reduce the menu seen top of all pages to Galactic Arms, and Columns ( 22 columns of 22 sectors each).

The Columns lead to image maps of each sector below it. The sector image maps link to the Sub-Sector maps. Click on the Sub-Sector maps, those go a small planet menu which links to each planet.

Or there are sectors listed under the columns, and those lead to a series of image maps.

No search, but I can add it in.

I have looked at Foundation 5 and Bootstrap frontends, but they just don't seem like they would help me.

I bought a CSS3 book, PHP 5 book, and a html5 book for reference.

It looks to me a complete redo on my site is eventually going to be necessary. From doing it on another site, the sooner the better. I retire next year, and I think about 7-8 months from now I'll have the time to sit down and redo my site.

In the meanwhile, I'll work on several test sites and see what I can get my brain to set up.
 
Traveller gamers and referees are the intended audience.

I finally came up with an image map of the galaxy arms on the front page of my site.

Each Column/Sector that has maps shows a number for the planets mapped in that area.

That main image map leads to sector image maps. The sector image maps lead to sub-sector image maps. The sub-sector maps show the planets, and there are links on that page that lead to each planet's page.

There probably could be a better methodology...
 
I have decided to use this method.

1) Entrance page has image maps that links to sector image maps that are completed or being worked on. One image map for each Galaxy Arm, the numbers show which sectors and how many planet maps there are per sector.

2) Each sector map that leads to sub-sector maps with planet maps is linked to them.

3) Each sub-sector map page shows the planets mapped, and has a link above it to each planet maps.

Since I zoomed along to get 501 planet maps on my site, very few planet maps have UWPs or anything else. Those that have Starports do have that information, along with sub-sector capitals, if any.

In January, 2014 I'll start work on the image maps and links to the planet maps.

There are two searches there. One via textpattern on the left column, and on centered at the top is a Google search.

I have placed a suggested list of planet surnames, I have a large number of hyphenated planet names, or you could just search for Planet: or UWP.

If you spot any bad links, or no planet maps on its page, please let me know.

Thanks.
 
I found a free css dropdown menu system that I think will fix it up a bit and make it easier to navigate. I'll still use the image maps for part of it.

I'll try to get the new navigation menus up this week.
 
At last, I got the new site navigation menus for my site to work. I think it will be easier to find things on my site now. I know the Starship Wanderer part of the menu needs work.
 
(This sort of thing is why I never got into CMS for websites; I saw that there'd be limits, imposed by either the CMS itself, or the underlying framework, and even back in the 1990s, I imagined the site growing. I decided it wasn't right for me; that doesn't mean that a CMS is universally bad or the wrong choice.)

Freelance Traveller's website was originally (and still is) built with FrontPage 2003, with a few design-time Components to generate the menus. The structure is manually managed, and I decided from the earliest days that I'd maintain a hierarchical structure (based on type of article [now magazine section]). It's served me well; I now have well over 1,000 articles, I don't think anything is more than four clicks from the home page, and I'm not running into any sort of design-time or run-time limits - and essentially none of the pages is "heavy" except for those with graphics.
 
I got the cms and css pretty much figured out. Its that I already have slightly over 500 pages, and will likely go to well lots more. I am not certain I'll have alot of free time now that I'm retired. My relatives don't want me to 'be idle'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top